If grades in disarmament diplomacy were given out for perseverance, then Canada would surely merit an “A” for its efforts on behalf of the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, or FMCT. Forging this treaty, which would ban the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons, has been a supposed goal of the international community for over half a century. In that time, though, negotiations to bring the treaty about never even started, suggesting that the FMCT is one of those worthy goals that are periodically affirmed without any serious effort to realize them. And though Canada has traditionally led efforts to move forward on the treaty, the Canadian-led group most recently charged with supporting future negotiations has submitted a report that deserves a failing grade.
This is unfortunate, because the FMCT, if it ever happens, could have a major impact on reducing nuclear proliferation. The problem is that the 25-member preparatory group asked to facilitate the task of future negotiators has recommended that “the negotiation of a treaty … begin without delay in the Conference on Disarmament.” This is not a realistic solution, as anyone familiar with the Conference on Disarmament knows it does not act “without delay” on anything. It simply does not get things done. To initiate work on the FMCT will require its liberation from this diplomatic dungeon.
Canada has been closely associated with the FMCT since 1995, when the late Canadian Ambassador Gerald Shannon won approval for a mandate to negotiate the treaty at the Conference on Disarmament. In principle, the Geneva-based, 65-nation Conference is the United Nation’s designated forum for negotiating multilateral arms control and disarmament agreements. The forum operates under an extreme version of the consensus procedure, whereby no decision can be taken unless all members agree. Given the various perspectives and priorities of its member states, it has been unable to agree on and implement a program of work for twenty years. Nominally, it is this diplomatic forum that is supposed to assume the task of negotiating the FMCT, but opposition from one member, Pakistan—which claims that the treaty would be contrary to its national security interests—has blocked any official work on the treaty.
Each year through 2011, Canada led on a UN General Assembly resolution calling for the Conference on Disarmament to start negotiating the FMCT. In 2012, recognizing that simply repeating the resolution was an exercise in futility given the gridlock in Geneva, Ottawa decided on a new tack. That year, Canada led on a resolution establishing a Group of Governmental Experts “to make recommendations on possible aspects that could contribute to but not negotiate a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.” This mandate’s awkward formulation reflected the reluctance of some UN parties to see any type of negotiation on the FMCT begin.
The Group of Governmental Experts operated over eight weeks in 2014 and 2015, under a Canadian chair, and successfully adopted a consensus report. It was able to do this by eschewing any effort to forge common positions in favor of enumerating the differing views held by states on the key issues concerning the treaty. One issue that has loomed large as a point of contention is the question of the treaty’s scope, specifically whether it will be limited to future production of fissile material or cover past production—existing stocks—as well. The group’s 2015 report concluded that “the various perspectives of States on a treaty should not be an obstacle to commencement of negotiations.” It also affirmed that the so-called Shannon mandate, which recognized that the issue of scope remained open, “continues to provide the most suitable basis on which future negotiations can commence without further delay in the Conference on Disarmament.”
Despite these upbeat conclusions, further delay was very much in the cards and differing views continued to obstruct any action on the FMCT at the Conference on Disarmament.
Canada therefore seemed to be back at square one in terms of getting any negotiation underway. Apparently animated by an “if at first you don’t succeed…” attitude, Canada proposed a sequel to the Group of Governmental Experts under a new if more pretentious label. The “high-level fissile material cut-off treaty preparatory group” was the result, and Canada was once again able to obtain UN General Assembly support for this variation on an old theme. The preparatory group was duly constituted and met in 2017 and 2018, again under a Canadian chair. It was able to produce a consensus report, published by the United Nations in July.
Although the express intention of the preparatory group was to build upon rather than duplicate the work of the Group of Governmental Experts, the July report enumerates states’ various views on the FMCT—including scope, definitions, verification, and legal aspects—in a way that makes it highly similar to the earlier group’s work. The new report’s self-described “plain-language menu of potential treaty elements” has some value, but the array of preferences expressed has changed little since the 2015 report. Indeed, it would appear that the preparatory group didn’t even attempt to converge the views, as the report notes that “no attempt was made to narrow this range of substantive options.” The casual observer would be justified in questioning the purpose of the entire exercise if it didn’t even try to narrow the differences among states with respect to what the FMCT should include.
If the familiar nature of the views recorded by the preparatory group was disappointing, its recommendation that negotiation “begin without delay in in the Conference on Disarmament” was even more so, given that body’s track record. To confine the negotiation of the FMCT to such a dysfunctional forum seems the height of diplomatic folly, but this is the considered recommendation of the 25 members of the preparatory group. It would appear to serve everyone’s interests to repeat the hollow ritual of invoking the Conference on Disarmament gods, and Canada, regrettably, has been a willing shaman to this spectacle.
The 190 members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which first entered into force in 1970, committed themselves to nuclear disarmament as well as nonproliferation goals. In 1995 that treaty was indefinitely extended on the basis of a “package” of decisions, which included making the negotiation of an FMCT a top priority. Like the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which opened for signature in 1996, the FMCT was seen as an important tool for reducing nuclear proliferation. The protracted failure to conclude such a treaty (or even start negotiations on it) contributes to a credibility crisis that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is now experiencing. If it can’t deliver on such core commitments after decades, what authority can it expect to command going forward?
To initiate work on the FMCT will require it to be freed from the constraints of the Conference on Disarmament and granted a fresh start under the authority of a diplomatic body not subject to the veto of any one state. This might be best achieved via a UN General Assembly resolution. Alternatively, a group of concerned states—such as the five official nuclear weapon states under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or some other group that possesses fissile material—could undertake ad hoc negotiations.
Until the political will can be generated for such concrete action, the disarmament community should avoid exercises in treading water like the recent FMCT preparatory group. However well-intended, they only provide an illusion of progress, and further erode the credibility of the global nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime.
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Ambassador Paul Meyer's commitment to the FMCT is to be admired and such a treaty obviously would have been a positive gain for the broader structure of nuclear governance in times past. As stated by Paul Meyer, the original objectives of an FMCT were to contain further nuclear weapons proliferation and to contribute to nuclear disarmament. On the international nuclear arms control agenda since the 1950s, it was in 1993, that the United Nations General Assembly adopted a Resolution calling for the negotiation of a FMCT in the Conference on Disarmament (CD). The CD took up the matter in 1994 and by March 1995, a compromise-negotiating mandate (CD/1299) was cobbled together by Ambassador Gerald Shannon (Canada) that envisaged negotiations in the CD on a treaty with the proviso that any delegation could raise any relevant matter during the negotiations. Until now States have not been able to coalesce around a common negotiating mandate. In this context, it needs to be recalled that the Shannon mandate was cobbled together rather quickly as many Western delegations felt it important to achieve some consensus on a FMCT negotiation at the CD before the opening of the critically important 1995 Review and Extension Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPTREC). Hence, Western delegations that were opposed to the notion of including existing stocks in the negotiating mandate successfully manoeuvred consensus on the so-called ‘Shannon mandate’ contained in the report of Ambassador Shannon to the effect that while existing stocks of military nuclear material were not included specifically, any delegation could raise the matter during negotiations in an ad hoc committee. This in-built defect in the ‘Shannon mandate’ has blighted discussions on a FMCT for decades. The "non-proliferation" benefits of a FMCT were pulverized by the nuclear tests carried out first by India and then by Pakistan in May 1998, and remaining embers were extinguished by the nuclear test by the DPRK in 2006. Thus, an FMCT no longer had any non-proliferation benefits, as except for the five nuclear-weapon States and DPRK, India, Israel and Pakistan, all other States are bound by the NPT not to develop nuclear weapons. The remaining benefit of an FMCT since 1998 would be the contribution to nuclear disarmament, IF existing stocks of nearly 1,500 metric tons of HEU and nearly 500 metric tons of plutonium, in military uses in the nine above-mentioned States, are brought under an international system of accounting, control, verification and irreversible elimination. Even after five nuclear security summits (1996, 2010-2016), 83% of the world's "dangerous nuclear materials" remain outside of any international accountability. While Canada is to be commended for its efforts to push for an FMCT, the two reports of 2015 and 2018 only reflect the wide differences in approach, scope, definitions and verification existing between States. Furthermore, only 25 selected States were asked to participate in the two "expert: exercises > this is regarded by many States as being unrepresentative and therefore not credible. Going outside the CD to negotiate yet another treaty, such as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear weapons (TPNW), will add to further divisiveness rather than bringing the international community together and possibly result in a third treaty languishing in the void (in addition to the CTBT and TPNW) as a victim of deception by the nuclear-armed States and their allies. In sum, now the need for an FMCT has been overtaken by the TPNW and related efforts to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons, and to save the NPT in 2020.
It would be incorrect to state that the CD has failed to make progress because of one country - 'Pakistan'. Before 2009, the Bush Administration had opposed a verifiable FMCT, which was the main cause of stalemate at the CD. Once Obama Administration changed its position in 2009, Pakistan also joined the consensus that led to the approval of CD PoW/1863. Immediately after this unexpected approval, Indian Ambassador Hamid Rao made a statement on 29th May in which he said: "We will not accept obligations not in keeping with or prejudicial to our national security interests or which hinder our strategic programme." After this Indian objection, Pakistan also withdrew its support. It would be therefore unfair to blame only Pakistan that has maintained a consistent position since 1995 and remains opposed to any such treaty that does not take into consideration the existing stocks.
If the consensus rule is a problem then the CD should not have been able to negotiate NPT, CTBT, BTWC and CWC. And if no progress is being made on the FMCT, there are other issues on the CD agenda that could be discussed and negotiated. CD was never created to discuss a single issue of FMCT.
The precedence set by the TPNW should not be replicated to negotiate disarmament treaties outside the CD forum. If FMCT is taken outside the CD forum, it is most likely that key states would not join, and without their participation a prospective FMCT would be a treaty by the non-possessors and for the non-possessors of nuclear material, as is the case for TPNW.
Excellent article which proves (in diplomatic terms) that the Canadian government, whether conservative or liberal, is an expert in going in circles, thus profiting NATO militaristic aims, rather than adhering to disarmament and non-proliferation goals, such as the Prohibition Treaty. Remark by Tariq Rauf that "even after five nuclear security summits, 83% of the world’s “dangerous nuclear materials” remain outside of any international accountability" is equally depressive about a chance that Canada could succeed in breaking the vicious circles...